Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison • Hacker News Board

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#491

Post by 4ndrewl » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 5:54 PM UTC

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #159

To put this into its proper perspective, see table 7 here: https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu... In 2022, the average murderer in the Federal Southern District of New York (N = 58) was sentenced to a median of 231 months, which comes out to 19 years and change. No crime of any type had an mean or median sentence higher than 25 years; most were far less than half. So it should be really hard…

Wasn't perjury and witness tampering significant here though? Messing with the actual justice system should end with heavy punishment I guess.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#492

Post by tsimionescu » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 5:55 PM UTC

MichaelRo wrote: post #468

25 years seems excessive. Funk, for murder they get 10 years in Sweden. Yes, fraud is bad but he didn't kill nobody. I think 5 years would have had been enough.

Fraud affects huge amounts of people, and is always premeditated. Murdering one person is much more excusable than defrauding hundreds of thousands.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#493

Post by flockonus » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 5:55 PM UTC

publius_0xf3 wrote: post #449

It's funny. I lost tens of thousands of dollars thanks to this individual, yet his sentence brings me no joy or arouses any emotion at all. I'm utterly indifferent to his fate for some reason and I don't know why. Yet if he had been a mugger who stole a much smaller amount of money from me on the street, I think I would've been far more vengeful. Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and move…

It's good to process the emotions associated, if truly is none, then great! Still suggest meditating if something didn't get pushed under the mind's rug with the financial loss.

Definitely move on, this case had some external closure where most hurts in life don't.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#494

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 5:55 PM UTC

dns_snek wrote: post #416

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #159

To put this into its proper perspective, see table 7 here: https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu... In 2022, the average murderer in the Federal Southern District of New York (N = 58) was sentenced to a median of 231 months, which comes out to 19 years and change. No crime of any type had an mean or median sentence higher than 25 years; most were far less than half. So it should be really hard…

Statistical value of a human life in the US is around $7.5 million. Stealing $10 billion is therefore statistically equivalent to killing 1300 people, or pretty close to half of 9/11. That seems like a pretty light sentence to me.

[deleted]

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#495

Post by sidcool » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

Harsh sentence. What could possibly have helped reduce it?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#496

Post by haltIncomplete » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #241

bodiekane wrote: post #181

It's wild that 99% of the "point" of crypto and a Bahamas-based exchange was to avoid all the laws around securities trading, banking, money transferring (anti-money laundering, taxes, etc), etc and yet when things go south, people still expect the government to come in and enforce a tiny subset of the financial laws they've otherwise been operating outside of. This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socializ…

> This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" but with the benefactors being the people intentionally avoiding all the financial laws. No, it's, as usual, the government choosing to do the wrong thing with your tax money, because it will be bad publicity not to, because votes, because power.

[flagged]

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#497

Post by micromacrofoot » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 5:57 PM UTC

publius_0xf3 wrote: post #449

It's funny. I lost tens of thousands of dollars thanks to this individual, yet his sentence brings me no joy or arouses any emotion at all. I'm utterly indifferent to his fate for some reason and I don't know why. Yet if he had been a mugger who stole a much smaller amount of money from me on the street, I think I would've been far more vengeful. Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and move…

Mugging is much more violent and personal. SBF didn't see you and think "that's the person I'm going to get" he essentially created a fraud machine that you and hundreds of others got caught up in. Very impersonal.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#498

Post by tombert » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 5:57 PM UTC

shuckles wrote: post #366

tombert wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, even if I didn't directly hurt that person, I could expect to get several years in prison, basically regardless of the state. Lets say three years to be conservative on this? Sam Bankman Fried stole billions of dollars [1], probably often around $1000 at a time from tens of thousands of people. If going with my logic, he should be getting a lot longer than 25 years, u…

> If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, even if I didn't directly hurt that person, I could expect to get several years in prison Almost definitely not, especially if it was your first crime. It’s pretty unlikely you’d even be caught. Severity of the punishment has extremely diminishing returns on discouraging future crimes. The only other impetus for a longer sentence is if you think the defendant is lik…

I do think that Sam Bankman Fried will commit more fraud the second he is able to. He hasn't shown any remorse, and he just blames everyone else for this mess even when there's dead-to-rights evidence.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#499

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 5:57 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #344

bambax wrote: post #62

I think that's about fair and reasonable. It's been said in Europe he would not have gotten more than years and it's probably true. 25 years is a really long time and even if he does only 20, still super long. Here's a live tweeting of the sentencing hearing; some of Judge Kaplan's remarks are really interesting. https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/177334004374401064...

If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, even if I didn't directly hurt that person, I could expect to get several years in prison, basically regardless of the state. Lets say three years to be conservative on this? Sam Bankman Fried stole billions of dollars [1], probably often around $1000 at a time from tens of thousands of people. If going with my logic, he should be getting a lot longer than 25 years, u…

You’ve identified one of the primary failures of the courts. As the number of victims raises the punishment for each victim decreases in our judicial system. Victim count is an aggravating factor and should be a multiple when calculating punishment. Instead we have a system that pretends to grant justice but is an actuality a tool of injustice and repression wielded by people whose entire perspective can be effectively reduced to might makes right. Despite our toys and complicated rhetoric we’re still just violent animals holding those with the least autonomy the most accountable and those with the most autonomy can escape the consequences of their violence indefinitely. A mass revolt or protest of the judicial system in the next generation would not surprise me in the least.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#500

Post by bena » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 5:57 PM UTC

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #430

bena wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intent has a lot to do with it. SBF operated with forethought and malice. He intended to deceive people. He was trying to commit fraud. Hometown guy did not intend to crash or kill anybody. Now the results of hometown guy's actions were more direct and severe, but had he had the choice, he would not have crashed and killed anybody. He's not a criminal, just a fucking idiot.

> SBF operated with forethought and malice. And hometown guy accidentally got behind the wheel of a car while drunk?

You think he woke up that day and said to himself, "Today, I'm going to get drunk, drive my car, speed, crash, and kill two people."

No. He did not. Everything that happened was likely unplanned. Hence, no forethought. And I doubt he was trying to hit anybody. Hence, no malice.

Yes, he still made those choices and they were bad choices. So he does need to make restitution. But the fact that he wasn't intentionally trying to do what he did makes his offense different than SBF's.

Now, is there an issue that our penal system is ultimately more punitive than rehabilitory? Of course, but even from a punitive standpoint, accidental murder should warrant less punishment than intentional large-scale multi-billion dollar fraud. We can't base punishments solely on the outcome of an event. Intent of the perpetrator has to matter.